NI emergency plan for Coronavirus COVID-19 revealed

The emergency plan was unveiled in the chamber in Stormont by Health Minister, Robin Swann, on Thursday.

- Testing capacity for COVID-19 will increase to 800 per day - more frontline health and social care workers will avail of increase in testing capacity.

- Third year nursing and midwifery students within the last six months of qualifying will be redeployed to clinical care.

This will happen in the next 10-14 days and will provide support of up to 880 senior nursing and midwifery students.

- Final year medical students at QUB Medical School will join the Medical Register four months earlier than originally envisaged and will accordingly become immediately available to assist medical teams across NI hospitals.

- All Trusts have identified specific wards to provide additional bed capacity to respond to the needs of people with Covid-19 who need hospital admission.

- Some 40 additional mechanical ventilators (30 adult units and 10 paediatric units) have been ordered bringing the total available in Northern Ireland to 179 by the end of March - there are currently 139 ventilators.

- The 88 current critical care beds can be increased by 38 if needed.

- It should be noted that the numbers of beds described assume availability of a full complement of specialist staff.

It is predicted that health and social care staff absence could be as high as 21% during the peak weeks of an unmitigated pandemic.

- From the planning assumptions available to the HSC in a reasonable worst case scenario - if Northern Ireland fails as a community to take action to slow down the transmission of the virus in line with the recommended public health guidance - up to 80% of the Northern Ireland population will be infected during this epidemic.